Hi all, I recently bought a 27in monitor (yeah one of those cheap Korean 2560x1440, which I highly recommend) and I'm about to upgrade my old 5850 to the 7950. I'm in the UK and prices are about the same as the 660ti and I figure its the best choice for the resolution. My question is which one to buy; the £251 ($407) MSI [http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-msi-radeon-hd-7950-twin-frozr-3gd5-v2-oc-5000mhz-gddr5-gpu-880mhz-1792-cores-dvi-hdmi-2x-mini-di] or the £257 ($416) ASUS [http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-asus-radeon-hd-7950-directcu-ii-top-5000mhz-gddr5-900mhz-1792-cores-dual-link-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mini]

Anyone have much or any experience with the coolers? I don't mind the ASUS being Triple slot as I doubt I will ever use Crossfire, and my 5850 was the ASUS DCU1 model which I loved. Also, any difference in OC expectations between the two? I do intend to OC but want to maintain low noise under both idle and load. I would also appreciate advice regarding any other non-reference 7950s which will suit my needs.

Excellent, thanks Scott! I was kinda leaning that way. On a side note, I emailed listener mail just before last podcast regarding the weird compatibility issue I was getting with the 5850. have you used a 7950 on the 27in 'first' panel you reviewed at all? It would give me a bit of piece of mind to know before I buy that its not gonna happen with the new card too.

A second for the Gigabyte coolers. The Windforce coolers they put on their higher end cards are pretty good on the cooling/noise ratio. It's got 3 fans instead of 2, and still comes in a dual slot config. At least as good as the MSI, I would think.

Between the Gigabyte and the MSI, I would just go with whichever is cheapest.

On the other hand, some HD 7950s come with a bios with a boost clock (like this Sapphire). Don't think the Gigabyte or MSI cards do. If you don't like manually fiddling with overclocking, may be a good idea to grab one of those - though you'll likely be able to push any of the above significantly higher than the boost setting with a bit of tinkering, sort of making the boost functionality pointless if you do overclock.